A great head coach makes a big difference in any sport. But especially in college basketball.

So, it's good to see an infusion of young blood in a racket that's been dominated lately by the old, crusty faces and dogeared names.

AP PhotoButler coach Brad Stevens

VCU photoVCU coach Shaka Smart

A pair of guys who still haven't seen their 35th birthday remain alive today among the final six. One is headed to his second straight Final Four having led an unprecedented mid-major achievement. The other has wide eyes on the cusp of Houston with a mountainous task before his guys to get there.

Each could just about name a destination, snap his fingers and pull in a $2.5 million annual salary.

Brad Stevens could have done it last year after he took the Butler Bulldogs within a rattled-out Gordon Hayward half-court shot of winning the national title. Now, he has the Bulldogs, minus the Utah Jazz's Hayward, in the Final Four for the second straight year. That is nothing short of amazing.

Stevens got the Bulldogs there by beating two-time national champion coach Billy Donovan, not exactly an old man himself.

He was being kind. Actually, Stevens just had the smarter players. Somebody had to make them that way.

While Florida guards Kenny Boynton and Erving Walker were all guts but short on poise in the final minutes, Butler's guards won the game, calmly and coolly getting the ball where it needed to go and making big shots when they presented themselves.

Shelvin Mack, Ronald Nored and Shawn Vanzant did exactly what they did last year in Indianapolis – they just kept coming in a relentless wave, driven not by ego but a conditioned resolve. It's so easy in a regional final to get caught up in emotion and allow a moment of super-confidence to blind your judgment as it did Walker.

That never happened to Mack. Show me a guard as mentally and physically tough as this guy and I'll show you a coach who helped make him that way. It's so hard to combine energy with poise. But that's Shelvin Mack; I voted him first-team preseason All-America back in October on my AP ballot even though his stats are never eye-popping. I should've done the same thing two weeks ago after the season ended.

Stevens is 34. He says he wants to stay in Indianapolis where he and his wife grew up. He says the money doesn't matter (he makes a mere $1M annually; thin cheese for his strata of coach) and that their friends and family nearby matter more.

But if Tom Crean – known among his eye-rolling coaching brethren as “Tommy Basketball” for his on-court chutzpah and histrionics – doesn't make considerable progress next year at Indiana, Stevens can have both. He grew up watching the Hoosiers with his dad; a lot of people who know him think it's the only job for which he'd leave Butler.

Then, there's Shaka Smart who's likely to finally get his brains beaten in on Sunday by Kansas. But so what? Where the onetime California (Pa.) assistant has taken a Virginia Commonwealth team without a real enforcer on the baseline is amazing. The final moments against Florida State on Friday night, after the Rams couldn't hold a 9-point lead late and were dragged into overtime, were riveting.

In particular, Smart's diagramming of a picture-perfect screen slip and lay-up off a baseline in-bounds with :07 left was all ice-water. It was a rather complicated play for such a situation when VCU's season lay in the balance; clearly the Rams had worked on it.

Three different screens were set, the influences of which were designed to pull defenders away from the target of the eventual pass – winger Brad Burgess. And Burgess had to feign a down-screen himself, subtly waving senior decoy shooter Brandon Rozzell past him, to make it look good so that his defender would think about switching out and hedge away from the hoop. It all took time to execute, so much that in-bounds man Joey Rodriguez had to wait an excruciating four seconds before throwing the pass.

So many coaches would have understandably taken the easy way out, tossed the in-bounds out to their best 1-on-1 player and let him go to work. But Smart knew the Rams were all gassed, particularly Rodriguez who would've been that guy. So, he counted on the poise of his players to all execute a play that took synchronic movement and ended with a shot that didn't take fresh legs to make. It was brilliant.

Smart won't turn 34 for a couple of weeks. With his heritage as a Donovan protege, he can name his locale and his price and he's earned it. He's making $325K now; he should quintuple that easily by this time next month if he so chooses.

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